Philip Kaufman: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Philip Kaufman.


KAUFMAN/SADE
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the December 2000/January 2001 issue of Venice Magazine.

Philip Kaufman might be the greatest American filmmaker you've never heard of. A director of uncompromising precision, instinct and intelligence with a sensibility much more European than American, Philip Kaufman was born October 26, 1936 in Chicago, the grandson of German-Jewish immigrants. After graduating the University of Chicago with a degree in history, Kaufman attended Harvard Law School, but returned to his alma matre after a year for a postgraduate degree in history. After relocating to San Francisco in 1960, Kaufman spent time traveling around Europe with his wife Rose (his frequent writing collaborator) and their young son Peter (who now produces most of his father's films). Inspired by the French and Italian New Wave films he saw there, Kaufman was determined to become a filmmaker.

Returning to the States, Kaufman and friend Benjamin Manaster collaborated on Goldstein, a mystical-satirical film based on a Hassidic folk tale. Shot over a period of two years, the film shard the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at Cannes in 1964, with Jean Renior hailing it as "the best American film I have seen in 20 years." Kaufman's next film was Fearless Frank (1965), starring Jon Voight in his film debut. A combination comic book/countercultural fable, the film took four years to find a distributor, and did little business. It took Kaufman until 1972 before he was able to secure major studio backing for The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, a revisionist take on the Jesse James-Cole Younger gang. After The White Dawn (1974), a whaling adventure starring Warren Oates, shot in the Arctic, Kaufman began work on his adaptation of The Outlaw Josey Wales. Originally hired by star-producer Clint Eastwood to write and direct the western epic, Kaufman was fired after two weeks of shooting, but retained screenplay credit. He scored his first box office hit with the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and further enhanced his growing reputation with the cult hit The Wanderers the following year. The Right Stuff (1983), based on Tom Wolfe's tongue-in-cheek look at the early days of the space program, was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won four. After a five year hiatus, Kaufman returned with the masterful The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), a sexually-frank portrait of a womanizing doctor (Daniel Day-Lewis) set against the politically tumultuous backdrop of 1968 Prague. It won Best Film and Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics. Kaufman's next film, Henry and June (1990), also dealt frankly with adult sexuality in telling the story of author Anaïs Nin and her affair with fellow scribe Henry Miller in Paris of the 1930's. The first, and last, major studio release to carry the NC-17 rating (Showgirls notwithstanding), the film was a critical success and a box office failure. Kaufman next adapted Michael Crichton's culture clash thriller Rising Sun (1993), a murder mystery set in the Japanese-American underworld, starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.

Philip Kaufman's latest film might rank among his best work, and is certainly one of the most important films of 2000. Quills, adapted by Doug Wright from his play, tells the story of the Marquis de Sade (Geoffery Rush, brilliant as always) during his final days in the notorious Charenton insane asylum in post-revolutionary France. The Marquis, still arguably the most controversial author in history with scatological literary works such as Justine and Salo: 120 Days of Sodom to his credit, finds his artistic freedom challenged when a progressive (and sadistic) new doctor (Michael Caine) is brought into run the asylum by the authority of Napoleon himself, usurping the rule of the liberal-minded young priest (Joaquin Phoenix) who allows the Marquis writing materials with which to create his perverse works. Throw into the mix a ravishing young laundress (Kate Winslet) for whom the priest and the Marquis both have eyes, and you have all the ingredients for one of the most thought-provoking, horrifying, hilarious and stunning films in many a moon. Since the Marquis is a subject from whom most filmmakers have tended to shy away (only Peter Brook's legendary film Marat/Sade (1966), based on his equally legendary staging of Peter Weiss' play, has dealt with the subject before, as well as a forgettable 1969 film starring Keir Dullea), this makes Quills all the braver as a work, as well as a still-relevant commentary on artistic freedom, and moral hypocrisy in our post-Kenneth Starr political age. Mr. Kaufman (as well as most of the cast and author Wright) should do rough drafts of their Oscar speeches between now and March, 2001.

Philip Kaufman sat down with Venice recently to talk about his latest work, as well as his career as one of America's most original and challenging filmmakers.

Tell us what drew you to this particular script, because this is first time you've directed a film that you haven't written.
Philip Kaufman: I thought it was a great story. I had read the Marquis in the 60's, although I'd never thought of making a film about him. I'd seen Marat/Sade on Broadway when it first opened, and it was one of the greatest experiences I'd ever had in theater. It just blew me away. Somehow we got seats right down in front, and the lunatics were surrounding me in the boxes. Glenda Jackson was on stage right in front of me and was just fantastic. Although the film version was very good, it was more like they were moving a camera through the staged play. It never really made the transformation into a movie that they might have done. The play was claustrophobic, but it was also like you were caught in the middle of this very grand, mad entertainment, almost like it was an Olsen and Johnson show like Hellzapoppin'! (laughs) You truly felt the madness around you. I also got to know Peter Brook later through our frequent collaborator, Jean-Claude Carrière. So there were all these little connections that were there, but I have to go back to the fact that Doug Wright wrote what I felt was a very potent and powerful fable. I thought it was almost a mythical tale, something you don't get to see much anymore. Those tend to get watered down nowadays with this endless quest we have for the happy ending, which denies the kind of liberating, curative, instructive powers of tragedy. We want comedies and happy endings, and consequently we resorted to a lot of violence in movies and we let the hero go off in the end, ready for a sequel. Commercial considerations I think have caused the ruin of folk tales. Also the subject of adult sexuality is not done very much, or very well in film. It's almost done on a pornographic level: beautiful bodies in bed together, without any sense of the content or resonances of the characters. The irony is that everyone, I think, thinks about sex all the time, whereas they don't think about violence all the time. Europeans are much more aware of that and much more open to portraits of sexuality in film, whereas they're much more wary of violence in film.

When I was watching the film, I kept thinking back to The Crucible both because of the subject matter and because of the relevance to the time in which it was written. With Quills, the correlations between the Clinton-Kenneth Starr hearings are quite evident.
I read Quills when that was all going on. It's funny because I'm old enough to remember seeing "The Crucible" on stage when it first came out, during the McCarthy era. I never thought of that correlation between the two before, but you're absolutely right. Like the army-McCarthy hearings, the Ken Starr hearings were disgraceful. When I was talking to Michael Caine about doing the part of the doctor, he was unsure at first, and said "I don't want to play some angry guy who just comes in to repress everyone." I said 'Michael, there's a guy in our country who goes out to the garbage cans and the press runs out and surrounds him as he goes through the trash. And he smiles in the most inappropriate way as he does it. His name is Ken Starr. He always says things that sort of ring true to the public, but it's that smile that's sort of inappropriate.' Michael said "I'll do it." I take Michael Caine's character, Dr. Royer-Collard, to be a modern man. They often say that after the French revolution, we get into the modern man. Royer-Collard goes into the house that he's been given, walks over the bloodstains up the stairs and says "I never look at the past, only to the future. And let's put bars on the windows," to protect the virtue of his young bride whom he's about to rape. Then he smiles, as if to say "every smart man would do something like this." There's something so deeply hypocritical in that, because he basically becomes a Sadian hero. As the Marquis says himself later on, "(Royer-Collard) is a man after my own heart." (laughs) The Marquis believed man to be an ignoble savage, the opposite of what philosophers like Rousseau believed.

You've always had a gift for assembling amazing casts, and Quills is no exception.
Geoffery Rush and all of these actors are great people, and you can't say that about every actor. They're all very bright, witty, great conversationalists. The greatness of Geoffery is that he goes from film-to-film and is almost unrecognizable in each one. It was great to have a Marquis who wasn't a leading, identifiable actor. I asked myself who the greatest actors in the world were when I was casting, and certainly Geoffery is on that list. When I met with Geoffery, I discovered that he has a wide range of experiences that he brings to a role. He's very sexy. The daughter of our costume designer, Jacqueline West, brought her daughter to the set, who's a student at UC Davis, and she just found Geoffery incredibly sexy and seductive. You can feel how powerful he is when you're with him.

Tell us about working with Michael Caine.
I teased Michael a lot by saying 'Michael, I'd get to know you a lot better if you didn't keep getting it on the first take every time!' (laughs) He's amazing. He just gets it. But Michael, who seems to be so casual, he's joking all the time, when you get up close to him you can feel the heat coming off him. He's very intense. It's not nervousness, but he's all wound up inside, ready for the scene. To the outside world, he appears to be completely different. Ed Harris is like that, too. He's a dynamo inside, just simmering.

Joaquin Phoenix is one of the most interesting young actors working today. What was he like?
I was talking with Kate Winslet one morning in London, saying 'Who can we get to play the Abbé?' Kate said "Well, there's this one guy who I think is the best actor of my generation--Joaquin Phoenix." It was really funny, because Ridley Scott had been calling me about him, and Joaquin was flying up that afternoon to read for me! (laughs) Joaquin is complex, for reasons that we all know. He's hurt and bruised and has been through trauma within his own family. Yet what people don't know is how bright and articulate he really is. He chose a very difficult role here. It's probably the most difficult thing for an actor to play straight and narrow and give it dimension. We have very few actors who can do that nowadays. Spencer Tracy and actors like that could do it. But today, actors want to be showy, they want to be quirky. When you look at Joaquin, you see the resonance of a Montgomery Clift and John Garfield. He's very romantic. At heart, this is a very romantic movie. It's also about the making of an artist. What does it take to make a true, perceptive writer? Some people find it to be very sad, but I find it to be quite hopeful in the end.

Let's talk about your background.
I grew up in Chicago. I was an only child. My dad wanted to be a journalist. He went to Northwestern night school and always tried to write, but he wound up in the produce business. My mom was a housewife. I grew up on the north side of Chicago. When I did The Wanderers it was sort of a reflection back to what that was like, although that film took place in New York. There were a lot of kind of American street guys there. We all wore club jackets. There was always the threat of fights, but never really were. That was the era before guns were really prevalent. We were all athletes, played ball, tried to get laid. Some things never change. (laughs)

Did the isolation of being an only child help you develop your creativity?
I suppose. During those long, cold, snowy Chicago winters, I'd look out the window and think about a lot of things. The other thing was that I was friends with a lot of very clever, funny guys. Many of them went on to become writers, college professors, and filmmakers, like William Friedkin (The Exorcist, Rules of Engagement). I went to grammar school and high school with Billy. He's a very funny guy, a real character. This was before people moved to the suburbs, so everybody lived in Chicago. We got this new, sprawling culture and I think we lost something in the process. I've always been lucky to have great groups of friends, and I try to make my films reflect that. I try to get all these great people around me where we talk about things that interest us. It's like experiencing college all over again for a few months.

Were you drawn to film from the time you were a kid?
Sure. I used to go to double features when I was a kid. In high school, we'd sit in the balconies of these huge movie palaces with our girls and make out. Then when I was in college, European films started to hit and I saw things like The Seventh Seal, The 400 Blows, all the French new wave films. I lived in Europe for a couple years around then and saw films by Pasolini and Vittorio De Sica, then came back to the States and films by people like Cassavetes and Shirley Clarke really excited me. It was the beginnings of the American new wave, and I made my first film, called Goldstein in 1962-63.

Was there one film that really did it for you, where you said "This is what I have to do" after seeing it?
Shirley Clarke's The Connection (1961) sort of drew me back to America after living in Europe for a while, and Cassavetes' Shadows (1960). Both had this kind of hipness of America at the time, especially the way both films used jazz (in their musical scores).

The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid painted a very documentary-like portrait of the old west.
Yeah, I thought it was important to do a more realistic portrait of Jesse James as a really scary, murderous guy who led certain members of his gang, like the Youngers, down the wrong path. It was the antithesis of the Tyrone Power version, which was very romanticized. In many ways, the Marquis de Sade was the same sort of person in Quills. Both he and Jesse are the most charismatic, likable people in the films in many ways. They are also potent and dangerous and can have a strong influence over people.

You worked with one of the greats, Warren Oates, in White Dawn. What was he like?
Warren and I spent about four months up in the Arctic together doing that film. He was a wild guy, really talented, really smart. He was also a mixture of a guy who would drink a lot, taking whatever it took to get off in those days, and a guy who would read The Wall Street Journal. He was kind of a mixture of hippie and right wing.

After that you did the screenplay for The Outlaw Josey Wales and started directing it, then Clint Eastwood took over. What happened?
Clint, for whatever reason, decided we had some creative differences. He was the producer. He was the biggest star in the world. One of us had to go. (laughs) It wasn't my choice, so...I've never seen it, actually. I hear it's very good. Orson Welles loved it and Vanessa Redgrave wanted me to write something for her after seeing it. The book it was based on was by a very right wing guy, and I really turned it into a more liberal, humanistic story. That, however, wasn't the original material that Clint gave to me.

After that, you did a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers which, I think, is even better than the original, which is a masterpiece in itself.
In that case we never told the studio the ending until they saw it, because I wanted to restore the ending that Don Siegel wanted on the first version. The studio made him tack on that epilogue that said the FBI had come in and everything's okay. It's like Humpty-Dumpty fell off the wall, but fortunately we were able to put him back together again! (laughs) I mean, there's something about being scared and being shocked that's healthy for the soul, if it's valid. That was a great experience doing that film. I loved all the actors. I loved being able to shoot it at home, in San Francisco. I loved working with Michael Chapman, a great cinematographer. I loved being able to make comments about the beginnings of the yuppie culture that was happening, the sort of "therapy culture."

I also loved the fact that you gave Don Siegel and Kevin McCarthy (director and star of the original) cameos.
Yeah, with Kevin it was like he'd been running for 20 years trying to warn people. (laughs)

Your next film, The Wanderers, is a true masterpiece, and really captured the transition from the 50's to the 60's.
I think Richard Price would say that his novel was really a bunch of short stories, and we really tried to make one story out of them all. When I was shooting Goldstein, we came out on the street one day and I saw people were staggering down the street crying. We were walking around with our cameras and saw a bunch of people standing around a store window, looking in and crying. That was how I found out that JFK had been killed. We duplicated that in The Wanderers with the people looking in the department store window at all the TVs, watching the news that JFK had been assassinated. I love that moment when Ritchie (the protagonist) sees this transition happen and he decides to go back to the old neighborhood and stay in the old world, instead of going to see Bob Dylan with the Karen Allen character and joining the new world.

On Raiders of the Lost Ark you have a story credit.
I didn't actually write any drafts of that. George Lucas and I sat down to write a story. I had the idea of the lost ark. George had the idea of the Indiana Jones character. We talked for about six weeks and then I got an offer to do another movie. About four years later, I got a call from George saying that he and Spielberg talked about the project on a beach in Hawaii, and would I mind if Steven did it? I said fine, and that's what happened.

After that you did The Right Stuff. It's one of the first films I remember that combined history with satire.
And a lot of people had problems with that. Many of the astronauts wanted to be portrayed as completely infallible. I always felt that John Glenn could have been president if he'd had more Ed Harris in him. (laughs) More of that sort of self-mocking, hipster guy. I think many people wanted the Life Magazine version of the story, although that would have been difficult if we were going to stay faithful to the spirit of Tom Wolfe's book.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a fascinating combination of politics and romance, based on a book that many people thought was unfilmable.
I thought it was probably unfilmable at first, too. But I started working with Jean-Claude Carrière, and we decided that instead of duplicating the elaborate, musical structure of the book, that we would try to make a movie that moved in more of a straight line. We made a very drastic decision very early on to take out the book's most interesting character, the narrator, who was the guide through the story. We took the philosophical overlay out of it and tried to bury it in the drama of the story. I've always described it as an intimate epic.

Henry and June was the first film rated NC-17. How did you feel about the rating initially, and what do you think about the state of the system with all this post-Columbine furor?
I thought it was great when it happened. I thought at last we no longer have an X rating, but a rating where children can't come to adult movies, but we can make movies that deal with sexuality in America. In my mind, it wasn't about violence, but about allowing depiction of mature, adult sexuality. Everybody thinks about sex all the time, but not necessarily violence. Yet we depict so much more violence in our movies than sexuality. So at first, it was great. The critics who had been demanding a change in the system were applauding it. Henry and June was doing great business wherever it played. Then suddenly, a few weeks later when it was time to go wider, theater owners, with pressure from political groups, decided that the NC-17 was just as bad as the X, and that grown-ups should not be allowed to see this kind of sexual material, and they wouldn't put them into their theaters. Newspapers wouldn't advertise them. Blockbuster Video won't carry them to this day, although they have much more explicit films that are unrated, with much more childish sexual things. Everyone who had been fighting the battle sort of disappeared. Now, as you say post-Columbine, with all this stuff being brought up during the election about the evils of Hollywood, I think it's very dangerous, and I think Jack Valenti has been very strong and articulate in fighting these attacks. But I think maybe we need a more complicated ratings system. Quills is not a film for children, just as Henry and June wasn't. But they're not meant to be X-rated movies that can't be seen by adults. I think in order to be a healthier culture, we should expand our discussion of sexual matters.

I understand your next film might be a biography of Liberace?
We're working on getting the script right. Robin Williams came into our office recently, saw a picture of Liberace with Carol Channing and proceeded to do a conversation between both of them! (laughs) We all fell off our chairs, laughing. I think he'd be brilliant as Liberace. So, we'll see. The other project we're thinking about is Henderson the Rain King, from Saul Bellow's book. Jack Nicholson is interested in doing it. We're also working on Killer Spy, the Aldrich Ames story, for Fox Searchlight. It's hard. I ran into an old friend the other night and we reminisced about this long list of movies that we had written, storyboarded, got all ready to shoot and then they never happened because we couldn't get Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise to do the leads. Very frustrating...

Any advice for first-time directors?
Get a good story. Story is everything. Many first-time directors think they want to do an MTV-style "calling card" movie. Don't do a calling card movie. Make as good a story as you can and get the best actors you can, all the tools you need to tell a good tale and dramatize it well. It's very easy to make a flashy movie, really. The older I get, the more I admire directors like Luis Buñuel, who have this seemingly simple, straightforward style where the camera moves, but is also telling a tale. We just need more good stories, period.